Health & Fitness
Attention Employers: A Culture of Movement Could Save You Money!
Creating a culture of movement in the work place could save money and so much more.
Wednesday afternoon I was lucky enough to give a health and fitness talk to several of the National Park Service employees out on Sullivan's Island. These dedicated men and women make sure our fantastic National Parks including Fort Sumter, Fort Moultrie, and the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site are maintained beautifully and continue to connect us and our future generations to our amazing heritage.
The local National Parks Service recently began a wellness initiative to help their team members improve their health. The plan includes monthly educational talks, a newsletter packed with wellness information, and a movement initiative allowing all members thirty minutes per day to get up from their desks and move.
You might ask yourself what difference moving thirty minutes a day could make to you and your team. The simple answer...a lot! Providing time for and encouraging your team to get up and move periodically throughout the day is one of the simplest and cheapest ways to increase productivity, decrease absenteeism, decrease money spent on health insurance, and improve the morale of your team.
In the prestigious journal, Science, in January 2005 Dr. James Levine et. al showed how individual differences in daily movement may explain much of our tendency to gain weight over longer periods of time. This weight gain is one of the key components driving up our health care costs and pushing down our overall health. The authors theorized that by incorporating increased non exercise daily movement each day, one could decrease body weight and improve health outcomes.
Large companies such as Safeway are the model of success in this realm. Safeway began a national program to cut health care costs in 2005 by giving their employees incentives for improving their health. The results have been staggering. Steven Burd, CEO of Safeway, reported in the Wall Street Journal in 2009 that Safeway's health care costs remained flat over the four year period from 2005 to 2009 while the national average increased by 38%. This cost savings does not begin to touch the less tangible and more difficult to measure factors commonly accompanied by a healthier work force such as decreased employee absenteeism and improved worker efficiency.
The writing is on the wall, if we do not improve the health of our workforce in this country we will eventually no longer be able to compete in the global market place. Rising health care costs and the proliferation of preventable disease have the potential to destroy people, companies, and the entire economy at large. The question remains, however, what will you do about it?
If you are an employer, it is time to begin a program to help your employees get healthy. If you are an employee, it is time to ask your employer about beginning some sort of work site wellness program. Today is the day we must take back our health and our competitive edge in the market. I commend the National Park Service in their effort to do this and I hope other businesses in the area follow their lead.
Please email me directly if you are interested in having me come and speak to your employees about simple steps they could take to improve their health or helping you get a wellness plan started at your company.